1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to an image processing method, an image forming apparatus and a host apparatus thereof, and more particularly, to an image processing method, an image forming apparatus and a host apparatus thereof generating a printing data of a document optimized to various printing environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus, such as a printer, an electric copier, a facsimile machine, or a multifunction device, receives printing data of a document from a host apparatus (such as a computer), and forms an image on a printable medium based on the received printing data. The host apparatus of the image forming apparatus generates the printing data of the document so that the image forming apparatus can properly perform the printing.
The document to be printed by the image forming apparatus may be obtained from various sources, such as a monitor, a scanner, or a digital camera. However, since these apparatuses and the image forming apparatus have different color representation types, an appropriate color conversion or a color matching is necessary to generate the printing data of the document obtained from these apparatuses.
For the appropriate color conversion or the color matching, a profile of a color management system (hereinafter referred to ‘CMS profile’) previously provided may be used. The host apparatus of the image forming apparatus refers to the CMS profile to appropriately generate the printing data of the document obtained from the various apparatuses to be in accord with the color representation type of the image forming apparatus.
A conventional host apparatus of an image forming apparatus uses a fixed CMS profile. Once the CMS profile corresponding to a model of the image forming apparatus which is to print the document is determined, the determined CMS profile is usually used continually thereafter. However, if the fixed CMS profile is used, it is difficult to perform the printing appropriately to various printing environments. For example, in case of a printing environment such as temperature, the fixed CMS profile fails to appropriately correspond to a seasonal temperature variation, and print quality deteriorates in winter or summer. In addition, with respect to factors such as a use history of the image forming apparatus or the type of the document, etc., just using the fixed profile is insufficient to obtain optimum printing quality.